artist statement

Connected – Fair or Flawed

The grid, in my mind, points towards organized structure, or rigidity, or can imply obstruction. For Walking Alongside Trauma exhibition I have used the unyielding nature of the grid to imply barriers or gridlock.

The three figures in Connection / Contagion are built from strips of clay laid out in a grid-like pattern, leaving some open spaces for telephone wire (a communication wire) to be woven through, awkwardly uniting them. It is a comment on both the positive and negative aspects around connectivity – a community may be united, but a community is also susceptible to the ripple effects of vicarious trauma.

A Gulliver Moment

There are opposing characteristics of fragility and of resilience rooted in the ceramic medium, and in A Gulliver Moment. The figure was damaged in the firing, and artist Drew Shaffer imagined and made a wooden base elevating and featuring the surviving fragment. By tying it down with a netting made of re-bar wire I refer to my Witness’s situation, imagining, how a person confronts and survives a combination of societal barriers and responsibilities.

Trio of Walkers

These three ‘walking’ figures were rapidly made, the arms cut away from the torsos, and stood upright while still pliable, permitting gesture, and some cracking. Each is tenuously balanced, implying both motion and vulnerability. They may appear to be walking together, but are also solitary, and each displays a different form of grid. During conversations with my Witness, it came to me that society’s caregivers may be living parallel lives of risk, alongside their clients, experiencing their own forms of trauma, though from different sources.